Contents

Issue

3 of the world’s top 5 most-visited museums are based in England, and nearly 40 million people visit our national museums and galleries each year.

Our national museums and galleries are truly world-leading. They are important centres for scholarship and research, as well as being hugely popular visitor attractions, enriching people’s lives and educating in equal measure.

Beyond our national museums, which are funded directly by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), England has a huge network of specialist and regional museums, run by charities, local authorities and educational establishments. Many of these receive public funding from the National Lottery.

Actions

We are maintaining world-leading museums and galleries, and supporting the wider museum sector, by:

Background

The government introduced universal free entrance to national museums and galleries in December 2001 and from then until 2011-12, visits to those institutions that used to charge an entrance fee have increased by 158%. We restated our commitment to free entry in October 2010 as part of the 2010 Spending Review.

There were 40 million visits to national museums and galleries in the 2011/12 financial year, a record number. Many museums including the National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, the Natural History Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum recorded their highest visitor figures ever.

Published:

27 February 2013

Updated:

28 July 2014

+ full page history

28 July 2014 12:00pm

The DCMS/Wolfson Fund invites eligible museums and galleries to bid for funding from a joint fund of £3 million in 2014-16.

27 February 2013 4:30pm

First published.

27 February 2013 4:30pm

Detail added: Continuing to fund capital improvements to museums and galleries through the DCMS/Wolfson Fund